This Is What Accountability Looks Like
By Abdul-Hakim Shabazz
There’s a moment in every legal career when theory meets practice—where you go from quoting the law to using it to defend your name.
For me, that moment came last year, when a former congressional candidate accused me—falsely and publicly—of being a pedophile. I didn’t take to social media. I took him to court. The result? A $400,000 default judgment in my favor. That same individual is now serving time in federal prison for falsifying campaign finance records.
This wasn’t a one-off. As of this writing, I have three active defamation lawsuits pending in Indiana courts. One stems from a false accusation of perjury. Another from claims I committed criminal campaign violations. The third? From the same defendant, who decided—on his way to prison—to repeat the original slander online. So I sued again.
Some people call that petty. I call it precedent.
This isn’t about ego. It’s about the rule of law. Because too many people have come to believe that “free speech” includes the right to defame, harass, and destroy reputations with zero consequence. It doesn’t.
Under Indiana law, defamation—particularly defamation per se—remains a viable tort with teeth. And Indiana Trial Rule 55 allows litigants to seek default judgment when defendants fail to answer. I’ve already used it once, and I’m prepared to use it again.
There’s also the modern wrinkle: Judgment enforcement is evolving. Platforms like Judgment Marketplace now allow plaintiffs to monetize court judgments by selling them to third-party collectors. These firms buy judgments—often for 10 to 15 cents on the dollar—and pursue enforcement through garnishments, liens, and long-term asset monitoring. It’s not personal. It’s procedural.
And it’s working.
There’s a broader point here for the legal community. We cannot allow the boundaries between protected speech and actionable defamation to dissolve in the name of digital convenience or political theater. Lawyers, journalists, public servants—we’re all increasingly vulnerable to targeted misinformation. If we don’t enforce the line, we lose it.
The law is still a shield. But sometimes it needs to be a sword.
This is what accountability looks like.
